The Effectiveness of Health & Safety Training and Its Impact on Construction Workers’ Attitudes in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Construction accidents happen due to defects in site environment or else defects in health and safety system. In the recent years, Sri Lankan construction industry experienced a considerable number of fatal and non-fatal accidents. Occupational health and safety training can be applied as a precautionary action to reduce work site accidents. The construction workers attitude towards health and safety training is essential to make it more practical. The main objective of the study was to study the effect of occupational health and safety trainings and its impact on worker health and safety attitudes. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to achieve the objectives. The data collected through questionnaires consisted with close-ended questions and five Likert scale questions and semi-structured interviews. The degree of application on health and safety training was analysed through frequency analysis. Further, the relationship between health and safety training and workers attitude and the barriers on implementing health and safety training were analysed through correlation and regression analysis. Finally, the solutions to reduce work site accidents were analysed through content analysis. According to these analysis, results proved that there is a positive relationship between health and safety training and construction workers attitude in Sri Lanka. Conducting high-engaging health and safety trainings, conducting health and safety meetings and inspections, rewarding and appreciations and managerial support were the results of the interviews to enhance the workers attitude on safety.